Johnston: Whither the Grand Old Party?

What the hell is the matter with Congress? What the hell is the matter with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner? Why won't the speaker bring a clean bill to the floor for a vote of the House of Representatives to end this closure of government?

What the hell is the matter with Congress? What the hell is the matter with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner? Why won't the speaker bring a clean bill to the floor for a vote of the House of Representatives to end this closure of government?

In case he may not know it, here is a bulletin for Mr. Boehner, “There is majority support for such a bill among Democrats and more enlightened Republicans in the House at this time to open up the government to serve the people, and pay this nation's debts. So, Mr. Boehner, act already!”

Are the Tea-Party-dominated Republicans really going to default and not pay the bills already run up by our government? Don't these yo-yos know that failure to act in this crucial moment means that this country's financial infrastructure will collapse! Do they know that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be damaged? Do they know that average Americans will suffer as never before since the darkest days of the Great Depression? Do they really even give a damn about the country?

Even the Republicans' greatest contributors like the Koch Brothers are telling the GOP to get their act together and do something positive.

The truth is that the Grand Old Party of Leverett Saltonstall, Ed Brooke, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Elliot Richardson, Robert Taft, Arlen Specter, and my former and younger Republican self is gone, dead, and interred with the bones of an honorable past.

In the place of “The Party of Lincoln,” the GOP has become, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal feared, “The Party of Stupid.” John Mc Cain and those Republicans who still can remember better and more reasonable times of crossing the aisle to make government work are shaking their heads in disbelief when looking on as their fellow Republican legislators dig in to get their selfish way to the ruin of our nation. Where is the cooperation that marked the actions of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil?

As I stated several months ago, Jindal, looked in utter disbelief at his party, in philosophical shambles, and said that he did not want his beloved Republican Party to be “The Party of Stupid.”

Well the governor does have the right to hope if he wants to. May it bring him comfort. The late and great long serving Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, was at long last forced by political circumstances to leave the Republican Party and join the Democratic Party because he felt compelled to find a place of political comfort and rationality in the turmoil of Republican discord.

I think in the future that more than a few thinking Republicans, possessing both intelligence and integrity, may be forced to follow the late senator's lead.

Page 2 of 3 - What is this evil that has befallen the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln anyway? What fear scares the devil out of Boehner and most of his more reasonable Republican members in the United States House of Representatives?

Well my friends, could it be the Tea Party and their friends: the anti-evolutionists, the anti-women's reproductive rights guys, the greenhouse effect and climate change deniers, the intellectually challenged mini-minds of the far right who believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, or those bigots who want to set up laws to cut down on participation in voting by minorities and the poor?

Are the so-called reasonable Republicans also frightened by those who hate the national Affordable Health Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare, as well as the followers of all of those Republican presidential candidates who stood up during one of their debates affirming that they did not believe in evolution?

If examined more closely, you may probably discover that these not-so-smart-guys of the Tea Bagging Confraternity also don't really believe that the earth is a sphere. Maybe these individuals should quit the poor Republican party and join “The Flat Earth Society.” At least those flat earth folks have a sense of humor!

Is it this Tea Party “base” that Republican lawmakers fear? Are they afraid that Tea Baggers will “primary” them out of office? By the way, the noun “primary” has become a verb. It is a transitive verb. “To be primaried” is this new verb in its infinitive form.

Over the last few elections, reasonable Republican candidates and incumbents have been knocked off in Republican primary elections only to be replaced by wild-eyed zealots who advocate “Second Amendment solutions” to legislative and social problems. Even the Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, quakes in fear of facing a “Tea Bag challenge” in a primary election in his native Kentucky for renomination to his senate seat.

Speaker of the House Boehner, also fears Tea Bag retaliation back in his own political bailiwick. Even more than that, Boehner fears the loss of his speakership at the hands of the Tea Bagging Republican troglodytes who dominate Republican thinking in the House of Representatives.

Should the majority of the House Republicans fail to reopen the United States Government and join the Senate to pass a debt override to pay our overdue bills? Will the country's credit rating fall into a great worldwide economic abyss? Shall the American dollar lose value world wide? Shall all the business of our federal government grind to a halt? Could it be that Social Security checks will not be deposited into the checking accounts and mailboxes of millions of retired people who depend on them to feed themselves? Shall our soldiers and other military in the field and their families not be paid? Will Medicare payments be paid? Will Medicaid payments to the nation's nursing homes be made? Will the pernicious Tea Baggers be satisfied to have made their point by tearing down the government? What was their point in the first place? Does anyone really know?

Page 3 of 3 - Do these Tea Bagger grass route heroes of the far right think that they will be killing national affordable health care with their stupid legislative temper tantrum? Do they know that attempting to fulfill that goal was never indeed a possible scenario? National affordable health care is passed law. It has been vetted by the Supreme Court. It is the law of the land and shall be the law of the land until such a time as both houses of Congress agree to do away with it, and then that self-same legislative action would, if passed, have to be signed into law by the president. That is just not going to happen my dear tea-sipping friends.

It is my fondest hope that in the year of grace, 2014, that the people of this nation will elect in the 2014 fall congressional elections representatives and senators to Congress with both maturity and a firm grasp on reality. I also hope that they all like the smell of coffee and love their country more than ideology.

James C. Johnston of Franklin writes for the Daily News on alternate Wednesdays.